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Enhanced Nanofiltration Performance of the PVC/PVA Thin Film Membranes for Treatment of Petroleum Refinery Wastewater through Incorporation of Amino-functionalized SBA-15 Nanoparticles

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Abstract

Thin film nanocomposite (TFN) membranes have shown remarkable potential for the extensive application in various areas, such as industrial and domestic wastewater treatment, dye desalination, and chemicals separation and purification. This work proposes a highly efficient TFN membrane by incorporation of the amine-functionalized ordered mesoporous silica (APTES-SBA-15) nanoparticles into the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) top layer of a polyvinylchloride (PVC)-based membrane. The superior TFN membranes were fabricated through a facile and optimum preparation method consisting of immersion-precipitation phase inversion followed by dip-coating method to address the challenges hindering performance. The physicochemical characteristics of the synthesized nanoparticles and prepared TFN membranes were studied using a variety of techniques including XRD, FTIR, AFM, FE-SEM and contact angle measurements. The presence of APTES-SBA-15 nanoparticles in TFN membrane enables efficient separation of contaminants compared to pure thin film composite (TFC) and SBA-15 TFN membranes that were investigated by calculating the values of various parameters such as water flux, flux recovery ratio (FRR), rejection percentage, total fouling ratio (TFR), and irreversible fouling ratio (IFR). A more hydrophilic TFN membrane containing 0.50 wt% APTES-SBA-15 nanoparticles (M3 membrane) exhibits a rejection performance of 91.41%, TFR value of 88.89% and IFR value of 11.11% with a total organic carbon (TOC) content of 15.05 mg/L for the treatment of petroleum refinery wastewater.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran

    Milad Hermani & Amir Sadeghi

  2. Institute of Polymeric Materials (IPM), Faculty of Polymer Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran

    Hossein Abdollahi-Esfahlani

  3. Faculty of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

    Abolfazl Sadeghiazar Sharabiani

  4. Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran

    Erfan Shafaati

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Maragheh, Maragheh, Iran

    Milad Hermani, Ali Imani & Ahdieh Amjadi

  6. Faculty of Science, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

    Atena Daneshvar

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  1. Milad Hermani
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Contributions

M.H. and H.A.E. participated in writing and reviewing the manuscript, as well as conducting the experiments and data analysis. M.H. also contributed in editing the draft. A.A. participated in reviewing and editing the draft and was present as a supervisor in the project. A.S., E.S., A.S.S., and A.I. They have collaborated in the synthesis of nanoparticles, review of research literature, writing and review of the draft.

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Correspondence to Milad Hermani or Ahdieh Amjadi.

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Hermani, M., Abdollahi-Esfahlani, H., Sadeghi, A. et al. Enhanced Nanofiltration Performance of the PVC/PVA Thin Film Membranes for Treatment of Petroleum Refinery Wastewater through Incorporation of Amino-functionalized SBA-15 Nanoparticles. J Polym Environ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10924-024-03300-x

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